


Threshold

by spinninginfinity



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 15:58:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinninginfinity/pseuds/spinninginfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Wash bothers Zoe, and then doesn't bother her so much.</p>
<p>
  <i>‘What is it about him bothers you?’ Mal asks.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threshold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notabadday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/gifts).



‘What is it about him bothers you?’ Mal asks.

Zoe doesn’t look back at him. They’re making their way back to Serenity, but she’ll only congratulate herself on a job well done once they’re out of the world. ‘Fairly sure I’ve no clearer answer than the last time you asked that, sir.’ 

‘Thought you might’ve figured it out.’

‘If I do, I’ll let you know.’

Mal runs a few steps to catch up to her as Serenity looms into sight. ‘’Cause I trust your instincts. There’s a problem, I wanna know about it.’

She smiles humorlessly. ‘War made me a little wary of folks, is all.’

‘You and me both.’ He leans into her, nudging her arm. ‘But Zoe, we’ve gotta start trusting someone besides each other some time. Can’t make our way in the world just the two of us.’

‘I know that, sir.’ She gives a proper smile this time. ‘I’ve seen you try to fly that thing.’

***

‘What’s your story?’

Wash jumps, swearing. ‘You can’t just lurk behind doorways like that. You’d kill a man with a weaker disposition.’

‘I don’t intend on killing you,’ Zoe says, stepping out into the harsh light of the dining room.

‘Not altogether sure I believe you,’ Wash replies, taking in her stony expression, her rigid stance, and most especially the gun in her belt.

Zoe sits down, not taking her eyes off him. ‘You came highly recommended, could get a job anywhere. Your home world weren’t exactly for Unification, but they weren’t exactly against it. Seems you’d wanna come down the law-abiding side of the fence. Guess I’m confused as to why you’d choose us.’

There’s a silence. ‘You suggesting I’m here spying for the Alliance?’ Wash asks, unsure whether to be outraged or amused. ‘Ma’am, I’m not made for sneaking and spying. Outside of flying a ship, I’m kind of clumsy. And awkward.’ He holds his hands up. ‘I know, I know. Lithe looking fellow like me, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Sometimes I fall when I’m climbing the stairs.’

Zoe doesn’t crack a smile. ‘Spies come in all shapes and sizes, to my knowledge.’

‘Yeah? Well, I’m not one of ’em.’

She holds his gaze for a long, long time, and in between being slightly terrified, it strikes him that she’s got the most beautiful eyes he’s ever seen.

He doesn’t know what she thinks, looking back at him, but whatever she sees in his face makes her soften a little.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’

Once he’s certain she won’t respond to him moving by shooting him in the head, he sits down opposite her. ‘Zoe, you don’t know me. Everyone’s tense, these days, and I don’t mind if it takes a while before you get to trusting me. But I hope you do, eventually.’

She nods curtly. ‘Well. We’ll see.’

***

‘Zoe,’ Wash says, breathless from following her up and down the ship as she gathers her weapons and armor. ‘Just what exactly is your plan here? Because I feel like you might’ve glossed over a few minor details.’

‘Plan’s simple, Wash,’ she responds, steel-toned. ‘I’m getting the captain back.’

‘By staging a one-woman ambush?’

‘That’s about the sum of it.’

‘Huh.’ He hurries to keep up with her as she makes for the door. ‘Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.’ Just before she reaches the door, he darts ahead of her, getting between her and the door release.

‘What are you doing?’ she demands.

‘What if I have a better plan? Let me be clear on my meaning: it’s a plan that involves significantly less risk of losing a limb. Doesn’t that sound good, a plan without limb loss? Or life loss? Minimal loss on all fronts.’

She stares at him for a moment. ‘Cap and I have done this a thousand times, Wash, and you’ll notice I still have all my limbs intact. But you might not, if you don’t get out of my way.’

He swallows but doesn’t move. ‘You hired me to fly this ship because I’m damn good at it. Now, maybe going in guns blazing worked all the other times; maybe it’ll work all the times after this, but right now I see a way we can use my skill as a pilot, and I think it’ll be safer and easier… and quicker, as it happens, and that last one’s of particular importance to me, because we should be sitting down to dinner right about now.’ He meets her eyes, pleading through the joke. ‘Zoe, please. Just hear me out.’

***

‘Yeah!’ Wash shouts, in response to a knock at the door.

‘I’m making tea,’ Zoe says, sticking her head into the room. ‘You want some?’

Wash closes the book he’s reading—some classic from Earth-That-Was about a boy wizard—and shoves it hastily beneath his pillow. He thinks it’s genius; he imagines Zoe might make fun. ‘I’m good, thanks.’

‘Right.’ She hovers in the doorway. ‘Thank you for today.’

Wash feels himself flush. ‘It was nothing.’

‘It weren’t nothing. You saved the captain’s life, Wash. Probably stopped me from throwing away my own. I’m grateful for that.’

‘You going to start being nicer to me?’ he asks hopefully.

She smiles. ‘Don’t push your luck.’

***

‘Tell you something,’ Zoe gasps, ‘you ain’t half so clumsy as you say you are.’

Wash settles next to her, looking smug. ‘That so?’

‘Uh huh.’ She shuts her eyes, trying to catch her breath.

She’s not sure how this started, how her grudging respect led to a desire to bring this man into her bed, but she knows that now it’s happened once, she wants it to keep happening. Wash’s touch is different, somehow, or maybe it’s just that it’s been so long, but she feels safer now, naked with a man she’s known but six months, than she has since back before the war.

She doesn’t tell him that, just asks him where he learned how to make love to a woman like that and encourages him to demonstrate again, but it strikes her as they place bets with each other as to who’ll figure it out first, Mal or Kaylee, that she’s just crossed a threshold, and she likes it.

***

‘I need to talk to you.’

Mal swivels in his chair to look at Wash. ‘Yeah?’

‘It’s about Zoe.’

‘You two calling it a day?’ Mal asks.

Wash steps fully into the room. ‘No, but your faith in our relationship is touching.’

‘Says the man who kept it a secret from me for two months.’

‘Hey, Zoe played quite a big role in the secret-keeping.’

‘I know it,’ Mal mutters. He leans back in his chair. ‘Fine, what’s up?’

Wash takes a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to end it with her. I don’t ever want to end it with her. I want to ask her to marry me.’

Mal raises his eyebrows. ‘Huh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re asking for my blessing?’

‘Sure,’ Wash says, after a few seconds of silence.

‘You’re going to ask her whatever I say,’ Mal deduces.

‘Uh… yeah, I’d say I am. This is really just an advisory sort of thing. A courtesy call, if you will.’

Mal drums his fingers against the arm of his chair, staring at his pilot. ‘Good,’ he says eventually. ‘Zoe thought you was asking for my blessing, she’d gut you.’

***

‘Wash is going to ask you to marry him.’

Zoe moves to redistribute the weight of the goods she and Mal are carrying between them. ‘Well, won’t that be a nice surprise for me.’

‘I don’t mean to spoil it. I just mean to warn you.’

She closes her eyes briefly. ‘For what reason?’

‘Well, you’re going to have to say no. Thought you might want to think on how best to break a man’s heart.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she says mildly. They stack the crate with the ones already loaded in the cargo bay and head back for the next one, waiting by the doors.

‘You understand, right?’ Mal asks. ‘Romances between crew members—things can get messy. Think with Jayne we might have enough mess on our hands.’

‘I don’t doubt it. You ever been privy to a romance between crew members, sir?’

‘Besides you and Wash, no,’ he admits, grudgingly.

‘We ever gotten messy?’

‘I’d really rather not know.’ He grabs the handle of the next crate. ‘So, I haven’t seen it with my own two eyes. That don’t mean I’ve not heard tell.’

Zoe wraps her fingers around the other handle, bending her knees to lift the crate. ‘Must be some real haunting tales, messy ship romances.’

‘You understand where I’m coming from?’

‘I understand perfectly, sir.’

‘Good.’

They carry the crate in silence to the stack in the cargo bay, and as they head back for the last one she says, ‘But I’m gonna say yes anyway.’

Mal stops still in the middle of the bay. ‘You heard what I said about it getting messy?’

‘I heard loud and clear.’

‘You understood?’

‘Perfectly, like I said. But I’m in love with that man.’ 

He gapes at her. ‘You—?’

‘Love him. Yeah.’ She meets his eye. ‘I want to spend my life with him, and if I have to do that somewhere off this ship, that’s the way it goes.’

She heads to drag the last crate fully into the bay and hits the button to close the door.

‘You’re going to catch a fly, Captain,’ she calls over her shoulder.

***

Mal marries them a few weeks later, ‘Under duress,’ he says, several times, but he smiles as he watches them whisper their vows to each other, and his congratulations when he pronounces them husband and wife are sincere.

Kaylee, thrilled to be Zoe’s maid of honor, cries pretty hard; Jayne, cleaned up better than any of them would have believed, with his mustache shaved in a sort of strange solidarity with Wash, cries harder.

‘Oh, you look so pretty,’ Kaylee sighs as they head back to the dining room for their reception of sorts, reaching out to touch Zoe’s long white dress reverently. 

‘Thank you, sweetie,’ Zoe says.

‘Ain’t she the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen in your whole life?’ Kaylee asks the party at large.

‘Amen,’ Jayne says, dabbing at his eyes with a large white handkerchief.

Mal eyes him. ‘You drunk?’

‘No.’ Jayne sniffs. ‘Just happy.’

‘I think I need to be drunk,’ Mal decides, edging away from him.

‘Is no one here going to tell me I’m pretty?’ Wash wants to know.

Zoe squeezes his hand. ‘You’re very pretty, dear.’

‘You’re my wife. You have to say that.’ He slings an arm around her shoulders. ‘This is my _wife_!’ he announces, gleeful.

Mal catches the look Wash gives Zoe, like as far as he cares she’s the entire ’Verse.

Yes, he thinks, he can make his peace with this.

***

‘Why’d you choose me?’

Zoe wonders about pretending she’s asleep, but she senses this won’t be the last she hears of it. ‘I was really hoping we could avoid this conversation.’

‘No. Uh. I’m going to keep coming back. Like a pesky…’ Wash trails off. ‘A pesky something-or-other. Seriously, Zoe, I need to know.’

‘You’re my husband. It shouldn’t ought to be confusing.’

‘Mal’s your partner. You knew Mal for years and years before you met me; you’ve been through… that, and worse. And you didn’t even falter.’

‘Mal, as it’s been established, don’t service me sexually. Come to think of it, you ain’t servicing me sexually right now, either.’ She rolls over to face him, pressing close. ‘You reckon we could get to fixing that?’

He stills her wandering hand gently but firmly. ‘Zo.’

She stares into his face for a moment, wanting nothing more than to fall asleep in a tangle of limbs and never talk about this again. But his eyes are so earnest, and she loves him so much, and she can’t bear to have him not understand.

‘When you’re at war, you think that’s all there’ll ever be,’ she says quietly. ‘I thought all there’d ever be was Mal. I expected that we’d die in some trench on some moon, and I’d look at him and I’d think, “At least we won’t be alone.”’ She pauses and Wash waits, smoothing his fingers through her hair.

‘And then it did end. And suddenly we were free. Not the freedom we’d fought for, that was for damn sure, but there we were with nothing to fight for at all… and I didn’t know what to do. Neither one of us knew what to do. Fly and keep flying across the black—that was the plan. Seemed we’d sort of drift until we died. Better than coming under Alliance rule, but still… not much of a life. And then you came along, and suddenly there was hope, and there was a reason to stay flying.’

Zoe takes a deep breath, meeting Wash’s eyes now. ‘Mal and I share the war, and it’s something you can never have a part of, and something I’d never want you to have a part of. In fact, I’ve a mind to never let you leave this bunk again.’

‘I’ve a mind to agree with you,’ he says, and they laugh before she grows serious again.

‘My past is a part of me, and it’s a part of Mal, and it’s a part of us that can’t be mended. But it’s the past, baby. It’s done. I look at Mal, and I see someone who shared that hope, and that pain. I think it’s possible I’ll serve on this ship until the day I die, and all the things he’s done for me—well, the man’s earned my loyalty, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But when I look at you?’ She reaches for his hand, locking her fingers with his. ‘I see a future. And so I will pick you every single time.’

Wash nods slowly. ‘Okay. Wow. I really love you.’

‘I love you, too.’ She holds his gaze for a moment and then blinks, patting his leg beneath the covers. ‘Let’s not keep thinking on it, now.’

‘Sure.’ He hesitates a moment. ‘You said something about servicing you sexually?’

‘That was me distracting you; you should really rest. You had an ordeal.’

‘Hey, I don’t mind being distracted!’ he protests. ‘You should feel free to distract me any time you like. Lots of distracting, in fact. We should’ve made that part of the wedding vows. Zoe,’ he says, very seriously. ‘I want you to distract me every day, ’til death do us part.’

She smiles, stretching, and then leans in to kiss him. ‘With pleasure.’

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback is welcome and appreciated!


End file.
